Partnerships and Collaborations

IP is an integral part of economic and human development, relevant to a broad range of approaches and sectors. Consequently, to effectively do its global public interest IP work, PIIPA is involved in many diverse partnerships and collaborations.

MULTILATERAL PARTNERSHIPS

World Bank’s Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development (WB-GFLJD)-Community of Practice on IP

The WB-GFLJD intends to provide an innovative and dynamic international system of exchange and knowledge translation, in a multi-disciplinary approach, which combines economic, legal and technical aspects of targeted issues. Relying on the development of an interactive web-based platform, the WB-GFLJD seeks to leverage production and development-related legal knowledge and customized legal solutions to development issues.

The Community of Practice (CoP) on IP was just established in March of 2014, under the co-leadership of PIIPA and a legal IP expert from the World Bank. This CoP on IP provides a space for community of practitioners interested in promoting IP for global public goods. It seeks to explore more effective ways of leveling the playing field in the area of IP to realize the full potential of IP as an equitable and valuable tool/mechanism for human and economic development in developing countries. In the coming years, it expects to be actively engaged in the global efforts to achieve the SDGs.

The CoP on IP held the first meeting of its membership at the 2014 Law Week, where IP and Gender, fair contracting in global health R&D, and WIPO SDGs’ perspectives were shared. A team of PIIPA volunteers from Steptoe&Johnson produced and represented a new paper on IP and Gender.

CoP on IP: CoP on IP Members at First Annual Meeting at 2014 Law Week, Tuesday, October 21, 2014

WIPO GREEN

WIPO GREEN is a global and multisectoral interactive marketplace that promotes innovation and diffusion of green technologies, via its network and its online data base. WIPO GREEN’s uniqueness consists of its assembling in one place technologies at all stages of development, from upstream research to marketable products (and everything in between). These technologies are thus made available for license, collaboration, joint ventures and sale.

PIIPA committed 300 pro bono hours in support of WIPO GREEN at the 2014 South South Cooperation Conference held in Washington-DC, where it also made a presentation on the importance of pro bono/low cost IP assistance for sustainable development.

Pacyinz Lyfoung, PIIPA Program Director, with other WIPO GREEN partners, at the November 28, 2014, Scaling up Innovation session

PIIPA is one of the Partners for COHRED's Fair Research Contracting, providing both IP expert support and now, IP Handbook support, which will both facilitate developing countries' efforts on equitable global health R&D.

The Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED) provides practical tools which aim to strengthen global health research systems. The Fair Research Contracting (FRC) initiative is one such tool that offers best practice guidance supporting equitable health research contracting and negotiations. By addressing the challenges in the global health research, the FRC tool aims to improve health research collaborations to the benefit of all partners in both governments and institutions that have limited or no legal support. The FRC can help to help improve the contracts and contracting processes by providing 1) Best practice contracting guidance (freely available online) on intellectual property, data protection, technology transfer and more; 2) Workshops on how to build effective research partnerships; and 3) Technical legal advice to research manager/s at institutions or referral to specialists in intellectual property and data sharing/sharing, overhead costs recovery. To find out more about the FRC initiative and how to access our services, please contact Jacintha Toohey on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit our website on www.cohred.org.

LAW FIRM PARTNERSHIPS

Venable, LLP

One of the PIIPA co-founders is a partner at Venable and was able to secure office space, in kind contributions and pro bono services from his colleagues over the years. As Michael Gollin, PIIPA’s longtime Board Chair and driving force has cut down on his activities due to his ALS health condition, Venable continues to support PIIPA in solidarity and respect for Michael’s global public interest IP work.

The Africa-Asia Agricultural Enterprise Pro Bono Program was launched in 2012 by Sidley Austin, to provide free legal support to small and medium sized agricultural-related enterprises and development non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa and Asia. The program aims to impact and benefit the small, poor farmers and farm workers, particularly women, who labor at the bottom of the food chain.

PIIPA and Sidley-Austin plan to expand their collaborative work.

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